This is Slippy-Slappy, Swimmin' Swanson, and Samsonite. (Did you guess that my favorite movie is Dumb and Dumber?) Sorry I couldn't get my children to sit still long enough for a good picture....you know how kids are...
I'm happy to report that we've been able to keep them alive for a whole 2 weeks now. And we were even gone for 3 days this weekend! Chad and I affectionately call them our "babies." Slippy-Slappy is a huge bully to his brothers and Chad had to threaten to take away a privilege (his favorite tank rock) last week to get him to straighten up. He will chase and bite the other 2 if they try to swim near the top of the tank...that's his spot. Samsonite is the "different" looking fish of the group and definitely gets picked on the most. Sometimes they don't let him near the top during feeding time and he has to wait for the sinkers to float down. :( Poor guy. I think I should get another one that looks like him and maybe they'll stop being so mean to him.
Fish are the only things Chad and I have parented together, although if it were only up to Chad.....we might have 5 kids, 7 dogs, a parakeet, and 2 hamsters by now. We haven't actually lived in a place together that the lease allows a cat or dog. And I've managed to hold him off on the kid thing by telling him they aren't allowed on the lease either. Just kidding...if you know Chad you know that of course he reads EVERYTHING before he signs his name to a document. Even the small print. I'm exhausted just thinking about reading all that.
But these fishies aren't our first together. When we lived in Colorado we had 3 fish.....Ku-Ku, Ka-Choo, and Sparta. I loved introducing these fish to people because someone would ask their names and I would say "That one is is Ku-Ku, and this one is Ka-Choo." After a pause, they'd ask..."What about the other one? What's his name?" Then I would scream "THIS.....IS SPAAAARRRRRTTTTAA!!!!" in an overly dramatic fashion. I guess it's kind of appropriate since they ended up dying in what I can only assume was a horrible fiery death. The light in their tank malfunctioned and they basically roasted in there. Sometimes when I'm in a dark room I feel like I can hear their little fins flapping and their pain-ridden fish screams. I still feel awful about that. Please don't share that story with our current fish babies.
In college my roommate (soul sister/bff/life partner/etc) Rachel and I kept a fish alive for like a whole 2 years. (Yeah, in a dorm room and everything...we barely kept ourselves alive in there, this is quite a feat.) His name was Master. He was a Beta fish. I'll give you a minute while you catch up with the rest of us on his name........ (Can't take credit for the naming of that one...that was all Rachel. Which further explains why I love her.)
Our friend Dooley (yes she has a real name, but no one knows it) also had a fish in the adjoining dorm room and Rachel and I came home one day to find it floating at the top of the bowl. We didn't want to see Dooley sad (and also because she likes to punch people when she's sad) so we decided we should go get her another one and she'd "never even notice the difference." Only problem with that plan was the fish we bought was completely different. We knew she had probably noticed when she came into our room and said "What did you f*%&# do with my fish?" I don't know why she looked in our closet (and I really don't know why we kept it in there) but she found her floating dead fish. Then it looked more like a homicide cover-up then it did a couple of girls trying to cheer up a friend after her fish had passed on its own without the assistance of anyone but Mother Nature. Dooley probably punched us at the time...but after all that's how you knew she appreciated you. :)
Here's to hoping we can keep these fish alive long enough to talk about them in another post. Because I know all of you are dying to read more about my fish....... :)
